Russia has been continuously attacking Ukraine with drones and missiles for 50 days and Kyiv has been under a non-stop bombardment, including day time attacks, for six days as President Vladimir Putin carries through on his “Pandora’s box” threat of unleashing a disproportionate retaliation for Ukraine’s campaign of increasing attacks on Russian oil refineries and retail companies. The barrage on Ukraine has been especially intense and driven shipping out of Ukraine's Black Sea ports, cutting vessel calls to one a day and shutting the Orlivka ferry crossing on the Romanian border.
Cargo operations at Odesa were prevented outright over August 29 and 30 by repeated strikes with Banderol S8000 jet-powered loitering munitions, and traffic fell from seven or eight ships a day to one, according to the Ukrainian Ports Association, cited by the Institute for the Study of War. On the night of September 1 at least ten more Banderols went at the port export infrastructure of Odesa and Chornomorsk, alongside Shahed drones and guided aerial bombs, and the Orlivka ferry crossing took direct hits, 24 Kanal reported, citing the regional emergency service and governor Oleh Kiper. Orlivka handles up to 1,200 vehicles a day and its operations are fully suspended.
Russia’s campaign has changed shape. For most of the summer the two sides were burning each other's warehouses, a tit-for-tat that began with Operation Wildberries in July and worked through distribution centres and supermarket chains on both sides of the border. Over the past three days Russia has moved past the warehouses to the doors they ship through: the berths, the grain elevators, and now a road-and-ferry crossing into an EU member state. Ukraine, unable to answer at sea, has answered by reach, putting drones over a logistics centre in Yekaterinburg, more than 1,600 km from the border.
Ukraine's export gateway narrows
The sea corridor was already under pressure. Weekly grain exports ran at 240,900 tonnes over August 20 to 26, up 28% week on week but about 32% of the roughly 760,000 tonnes a week Ukraine was shipping in early July, according to Ag Bull Trading. CIF East Mediterranean wheat at 12.5% protein hit a record $301 a tonne on August 26.
The strikes of the past three days have gone at what is left. Food storage warehouses in Odesa oblast were damaged on August 30 with a fire covering roughly 3,000 sq m, and a food-processing facility, a warehouse, port infrastructure and energy sites were struck in Mykolaiv the same day, Ag Bull reported. On the evening of August 31 a further attack on Odesa city damaged infrastructure that the regional military administration would not specify, telling UNN only that "infrastructure was damaged, we are clarifying the details", and disrupted electricity supply across the city.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had deliberately damaged a border crossing point with Romania as well as export infrastructure. Odesa region recorded more than 300 air-raid alerts in August, Reuters reported. Cargo is being pushed onto the lower-capacity Danube ports at Reni and Izmail and onto the western border railways, with Ukrzaliznytsia increasing grain deliveries to the Danube. Those routes are being hit too: on August 29 Russian drones destroyed five grain lorries and damaged three at Safianivka in the Izmail district, damaging about 125 tonnes of grain.
Russia's defence ministry said on September 1 that it had struck a combined heat and power plant and three electrical substations in Odesa and the surrounding oblast that supply port infrastructure, along with 16 ammunition storage sites and six fuel tanks in Odesa port and two military supply warehouses in Chornomorsk. No Ukrainian or third-party confirmation of any of that has appeared.
The pattern of shutting the other side's grain gates now runs both ways, and it arrived in the price of bread over the summer, as we reported when both countries began closing each other's grain ports. The difference is that Russia's three Novorossiysk grain terminals were knocked out of service in a fortnight in August, while Ukraine's ports are being closed by attrition, a night at a time.
The distribution centres keep burning
The warehouse campaign has not stopped and a reported 90% of Ukraine’s modern warehouses have now been destroyed leading to food crisis as supermarkets across the country are rapidly emptying. Two more Ukrainian retail chains lost logistics capacity over the weekend.
A warehouse holding goods of the Varus supermarket chain, operated by Omega LLC, was hit at Boryspil in Kyiv oblast overnight on August 31. "A large amount of our goods was damaged and destroyed," the company said in a statement carried by Interfax-Ukraine. No staff were injured and all 119 stores stayed open, but the chain warned that deliveries may be delayed and some items temporarily unavailable. A warehouse of the KOLO chain, also managed by Varus, was hit on August 27.
A distribution centre of the Avrora chain in Kyiv region was completely destroyed the same day, co-owner Taras Panasenko said, in an account carried by UNN. No employees were injured. Kyiv city administration warned residents of smoke drifting over the capital. Ukrinform headlined it as another Avrora centre destroyed near Kyiv, the chain having already lost a distribution centre in the August 27 attack.
A Nova Poshta terminal in Odesa oblast was partially destroyed overnight on August 30, in an attack that used one Kh-59 guided missile and 121 Shahed-type drones. The fire was later extinguished and there were no casualties. Kiper reported the strike and the State Emergency Service confirmed the damage, NV reported. It is at least the third Nova Poshta site hit in a fortnight, after the Sviatopetrivske warehouse and the Sumy terminal on August 28.
Parcels are being destroyed in transit as well as in store. A Ukrposhta delivery lorry was hit near Kramatorsk with about 500 parcels aboard, according to the Institute for the Study of War, which places the strike in its August 28 to 29 assessment.
Behind those individual losses sits a number that has not moved: Ukraine's minister of agrarian policy says Russian strikes have damaged nearly 90% of grocery retailers' warehouses, a cumulative figure reported by Meduza on August 31. Empty shelves have become common enough for the country's biggest grocer to cap purchases, a measure ATB introduced on August 28 and which it says is aimed at resellers rather than at shortage.
Ukraine reaches 1,600 km
Ukraine's answer over the same three days was directed at Russian logistics and refining with drones that can reach 1,600km beyond the frontline.
Drones appeared over Yekaterinburg at about 09:00 local time on August 31, near a logistics centre that monitoring channels identified as a Wildberries hub, more than 1,600 km from the border. The operator said staff had been evacuated and that the facility was not damaged. Debris hit three apartment blocks and governor Denis Pasler reported four people injured, The Moscow Times reported. Pasler confirmed a strike near a logistics centre but did not name the owner, and both the Kyiv Independent and Meduza said they could not verify the identification independently. It is the second time this summer Ukrainian drones have reached Yekaterinburg, after a Wildberries warehouse there was hit on August 7.
Belgorod took the heaviest single night. An Estate Logistics warehouse used by Ozon was hit and set burning on August 30, and the company confirmed the strike and halted deliveries in the city. Acting governor Alexander Shuvaev said a man and a 16-year-old were killed in a strike on "a commercial facility" and 16 people were injured, The Moscow Times reported. Militarnyi reported fires at the city's combined heat and power plant at about 16:53, along with a facility of the transport company PEK and a site in the industrial zone, though those accounts rest on eyewitness footage circulated by a local Telegram channel and no Russian official has confirmed damage to the CHP itself.
The most consequential target was the Kirishinefteorgsintez refinery at Kirishi in Leningrad region, operated by Surgutneftegas and about 790 km from the border. What happened there is disputed. Ukraine's General Staff says it struck the plant and that damage is being assessed, an account carried by RBC-Ukraine. Governor Alexander Drozdenko says a downed drone fell near the refinery and started a fire that was put out, and reported 62 drones destroyed over the region with no casualties, in remarks reported by Reuters. Neither version has been checked against an independent damage assessment. It is the fifth strike on Kirishi since March 2025, according to the Institute for the Study of War, and a strike in March 2026 shut the plant's ELOU-AVT-6 crude unit for about a month.
Russia's fuel crisis accelerates
Ukraine attacked Russian refineries 21 times in August, a monthly record, Militarnyi reported.
Gasoline output ran at about 80,000 tonnes a day late in August against domestic demand of about 115,000 tonnes a day, roughly 70% of what the country consumes, with the August average at about 90,000 tonnes a day. Perm, Nizhny Novgorod and Yaroslavl were named among the halted plants, Reuters reports.
August refining runs averaged 3.8mn barrels a day against the 5.3mn to 5.5mn barrels a day normally needed to meet summer demand, and in the first three weeks of the month gasoline production fell almost 20% year on year and diesel output more than 23%, according to Kyiv Post. S&P Global counts at least 26 refineries that have faced recent shutdowns. At least ten regions are running fuel deficits, including Krasnodar, Primorsky and Krasnoyarsk. Gazprom Neft and Tatneft imposed limits of 40 to 60 litres per vehicle by the middle of the month, and gasoline reached RUB120 ($1.50) a litre.
The government has responded by keeping fuel at home. The ban on exports of diesel, marine fuel and gas oil has been extended to September 30, and the gasoline export ban now runs to January 31, 2027, The Moscow Times reported.
The damage is showing up in regional administration as well as in fuel queues. Rostov region governor Yuri Slyusar has declared a regional state of emergency, backdated to July 10, citing the suspension of port operations and disrupted shipping in the Azov-Black Sea basin caused by Ukrainian attacks, Kyiv Post reported. It is the first time a Russian region has put its economy on an emergency footing because of the strike campaign.
Weapons and technology
Volumes. Zelenskiy and drone adviser Serhii Beskrestnov said Russia fired nearly 1,500 drones over the four days to August 30, of which approximately 800 were jet-powered, figures reported by NPR. On the night of August 31 to September 1 the Ukrainian air force said 218 Shahed-type strike drones were launched, about a third of them jet-powered, along with Parodiya decoys, and that 199 targets were shot down or suppressed with impacts at 28 locations, according to LB.ua. Russia's defence ministry claimed 239 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones intercepted over 14 regions plus Crimea and the Black Sea overnight on August 31, with more than 30 over Rostov, TASS reported. Both sets of figures are claims by the parties, not counts.
The intercept counts came back. Ukraine's air force stopped publishing missile launch and interception numbers on August 11, a suspension the Institute for the Study of War recorded as still in force on August 30. On the morning of September 1 it published ballistic intercept counts again: five Iskander-M, KN-23 or S-400 ballistic missiles downed, along with two Banderol S8000, five Kalibr and 187 drones. UNIAN framed it as a disclosure. Launch totals for missiles are still withheld, so no interception rate can be calculated even now, and no source says whether this is a policy change or a single night's exception.
Expensive weapons. The air force said Russia used Zircon hypersonic anti-ship missiles against Ukraine on the night of August 31 to September 1, alongside Kalibr cruise missiles launched from Novorossiysk, Kh-31P anti-radar missiles over the Black Sea and S-400 surface-to-air missiles fired in ground-attack mode, according to ZN.ua. No Kinzhal, Oreshnik or intercontinental missile use was reported in the period.
Jet drones. Air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said on August 31 that Russian use of jet-powered drones rose fivefold in July against June, and that they fly at about 600 km/h at about 5 km altitude while Ukrainian interceptor drones manage about 300 km/h. He put overall air defence effectiveness at about 90%, with jet drones intercepted less often, in remarks reported by Militarnyi. The Banderol S8000 has a fuselage about 5 m long and a folding wingspan of about 2.2 m, and is produced at about 80 units a month.
Interceptors, announced and demonstrated. Defence minister Yevhen Khmara said on August 30 that four potential interceptors capable of shooting down jet-powered Shaheds are in testing and that the aim is to scale production to thousands of units, Euromaidan Press reported. Zelenskiy said four companies have developed interceptor drones and that one has the most successful technology, without naming it.
CNN reported that Wild Hornets' Sting interceptor, costed at about $2,300 a unit, has destroyed two jet-powered drones, and that F-Drones' upgraded LITAVR+ exceeds 400 km/h, in a piece read at KVIA. The gap between an interceptor at 400 km/h and a target at 600 km/h is the whole problem, and it is the reason the interceptor missile stocks question has not gone away.
Electronic warfare. Ukrainian Railways received Unwave SHATRO counter-mesh electronic warfare systems on August 31, intended to protect rolling stock from drones that use mesh networks, Militarnyi reported.
What was not there. No confirmed first combat use of a new weapon type by either side appeared in the period. Nothing was reported on AI-controlled or autonomously targeting drones. No naval drone or shadow-fleet tanker strike was reported. The drone arms race is now being run mainly on volume and speed rather than on new types.
Major strikes and targets
Strikes on targets in Russia
| Date | Target | Weapon | Region | Damage |
| 3 Jun | St Petersburg oil terminal | Drones | Leningrad region | Hit on the opening day of Russia's SPIEF investment forum |
| 7 Jul | Omsk refinery | Drones | Omsk | Largest refinery hit to that point and the deepest strike into Russia |
| 16 Jul | Salavat refinery | Drones | Bashkortostan | Key units hit; about 3% of national refining capacity |
| 18 Jul | Wildberries warehouse | Drones | Tambov region | Seven killed; opens the campaign against retail and logistics |
| 4 Aug | Wildberries hubs near Moscow and St Petersburg; a refinery | Drones | Russia | Warehouses hit; refinery ablaze |
| 7 Aug | Wildberries warehouse, Yekaterinburg | Drones | Sverdlovsk region | 2,000 km from the border |
| 12 Aug | Novorossiysk Grain Plant terminal | Drones | Krasnodar Krai | Loading equipment damaged; company puts repairs at one to four months |
| 14 Aug | Last working Novorossiysk grain terminal | Drones | Krasnodar Krai | All three of the port's grain terminals out of service |
| 17-18 Aug | Five bulk carriers | Sea and aerial drones | Novorossiysk and Tuapse | First large-scale strikes on ships carrying grain |
| 19-25 Aug | Refineries at Ufa, Nizhnekamsk, Perm, Novokuybyshevsk, Afipsky and Novoshakhtinsk | Drones | Russia | Perm and Novoshakhtinsk suspended processing |
| 22-24 Aug | Ozon warehouses at Chapayevsk (Samara), Orenburg, Makhachkala (Dagestan), Enem and Adygeysk (Adygea), Nevinnomyssk (Stavropol) | Drones | Samara, Orenburg, Dagestan, Adygea, Stavropol | Four warehouses hit and set ablaze, with injuries at Chapayevsk and Makhachkala; operations suspended. Adygeysk and Nevinnomyssk evacuated on a drone threat but undamaged. Ozon shares fell 28% |
| 24 Aug | Astrakhan gas processing plant; Kamensky Combine | Drones | Astrakhan and Rostov regions | Two gas separation units hit |
| 25-26 Aug | Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez, Kstovo | Drones | Nizhny Novgorod region | Crude processing suspended; every major Lukoil refinery in Russia now offline |
| 26 Aug | Wildberries logistics centre, Kotovsk | Drones | Tambov region | Three of 19 drones got through; more than 100,000 sq m burned, complex destroyed, two injured |
| 27 Aug | Ozon logistics centres at Ufa (Bashkortostan) and Orenburg | Drones | Bashkortostan and Orenburg region | Ufa warehouse suffered minor damage and closed for inspection; Orenburg facility evacuated on a drone threat and resumed work soon after |
| 27 Aug | Bashkir Soda Company, Sterlitamak | Drones | Bashkortostan | Smoke over the industrial zone; target identified by open-source analysts, not confirmed officially |
| 27-28 Aug | Shchastia thermal power station | Drones | Occupied Luhansk | Fire at the plant; blackout across occupied Luhansk and Donetsk, restoration time not given |
| 28 Aug | Slavneft-YANOS refinery, Yaroslavl | FP-1 drones | Yaroslavl region | Fire recorded; eighth strike on the plant this year; damage not yet assessed |
| 28 Aug | Magnit hypermarket, Pavlovsky Posad | Drone | Moscow region | Store hit; 46 windows shattered in the adjacent clinic; no casualties; first reported strike on one of the chain's hypermarkets |
| 28 Aug | Power transmission line | Drones | Voronezh region | Two villages and a farmstead cut off |
| 26-28 Aug | 21 substations and gas distribution stations in occupied territory | Drones | Occupied Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea | Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces claim; no damage detail and no Russian confirmation |
| 29 Aug | Ozon logistics facility | Drones | Rostov region | Small fire extinguished; operations suspended for inspection, per the company; site placed at Aksay by some accounts and Rostov-on-Don by others |
| 29 Aug | DNS warehouse, Aksay | Drones | Rostov region | Reported ablaze by open-source channels; the governor confirmed only drone debris on the site |
| 29 Aug | Chizhik supermarket warehouse, Leninskoye | Drones | Rostov region | Reported struck by a single Telegram channel; no official confirmation |
| 29-30 Aug | Kirishinefteorgsintez refinery, Kirishi | Drones | Leningrad region | Disputed. Ukraine's General Staff says the plant was struck and damage is being assessed; the governor says a downed drone fell near it and started a fire that was extinguished. No independent assessment; about 790 km from the border |
| 30 Aug | Belgorod combined heat and power plant | Not established | Belgorod region | Fires on eyewitness footage circulated by a local Telegram channel; TV broadcast disruption reported; no Russian official confirmation of damage and no outage figures |
| 30 Aug | Estate Logistics warehouse used by Ozon, Belgorod | Not established | Belgorod region | Warehouse hit and burning; Ozon confirmed the strike and halted deliveries in the city; acting governor reported two killed and 16 injured at commercial facilities |
| 30 Aug | PEK transport company facility and an industrial-zone site, Belgorod | Not established | Belgorod region | Fires reported from eyewitness footage circulated by one Telegram channel; no damage assessment and no official confirmation |
| 31 Aug | Logistics centre identified by monitoring channels as a Wildberries hub, Yekaterinburg | Drones | Sverdlovsk region | Operator says the facility was not damaged and staff were evacuated; debris damaged three apartment blocks and four were injured; over 1,600 km from the border |
Strikes on economic infrastructure in Russia and Russian-occupied territory since 1 June 2026. Compiled from publicly available sources, including our own reporting and the Centre for Eastern Studies' war reports. Dates are of the strike where known and of first report otherwise; the list is of significant strikes on economic targets and is not exhaustive.
Strikes on targets in Ukraine
| Date | Target | Weapon | Region | Damage |
| 15 Jun | Odesa ports | Missiles and drones | Odesa | Export infrastructure damaged; first sustained pressure on the sea corridor |
| 6 Jul | Crimean power grid | Drones | Occupied Crimea | Peninsula-wide blackout |
| 14 Jul | Togo-flagged merchant ship, Odesa port | Missile | Odesa | Three crew killed |
| 19 Jul | Kyiv and other cities | Missiles and drones | Ukraine | Largest bombardment of the war to that date, in response to the Tambov strike |
| 27 Jul | Drone-industry exhibition | Missiles | Kyiv region | At least 10 killed |
| 31 Jul | US-owned drone factory | Missile | Ukraine | Plant destroyed |
| 5 Aug | Kyiv | 24 ballistic missiles | Kyiv | Air defences unable to respond; interceptor stocks reported near exhaustion |
| 18 Aug | Kryvyi Rih thermal power station | Drones | Dnipropetrovska oblast | Damaged beyond the ability to generate |
| 20 Aug | Antonov aircraft plants; drone and cruise missile component sites; three retail chains' warehouses | About 75 missiles, 23 ballistic or hypersonic | Kyiv | 18 killed, 42 injured, 90,000 customers cut off; no ballistic missile intercepted |
| 21 Aug | Largest shopping centre in Kryvyi Rih | Drone | Dnipropetrovska oblast | 16 killed, 140 injured, three missing |
| 22 Aug | Ukrzaliznytsia rail depots and repair works, Darnytskyi district | 11-13 ballistic missiles | Kyiv | Extensive fires; air defences inactive |
| 22-25 Aug | DTEK energy assets; Odesa and Chornomorsk ports; Rozdilna rail junction; two Epicentr stores; fuel depots | Missiles and drones | Odesa region | Six ships damaged in Greater Odesa between 18 and 24 August |
| 25-26 Aug | Power distribution across five regions | 162 Shahed-type drones, some jet-powered | Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia | Consumers cut off in five regions; Ukrenergo published no numbers |
| 26-27 Aug | Kherson combined heat and power plant | Five guided bombs over two nights | Kherson | All remaining heat and power generating equipment destroyed weeks before the heating season |
| 27 Aug | Odesa port infrastructure and a grain elevator | Missiles and drones | Odesa | Seven-hour attack; elevator and port damaged, three injured; trains delayed more than 17 hours |
| 27 Aug | Warehouses and distribution centres of Roshen, Comfy, Avrora, Budynok Ihrashok, Fora, KOLO and Epicentr | 258 drones, two Oniks and Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles | Kyiv region | Roshen, Avrora and Budynok Ihrashok centres destroyed; third strike on Fora logistics in August |
| 27 Aug | Industrial plants and an energy facility, Kremenchuk and Myrhorod districts | Drones | Poltava | Seven settlements cut off |
| 28 Aug | Nova Poshta warehouse at Sviatopetrivske and terminal in Sumy | Drones; four guided bombs at Sumy | Kyiv region and Sumy | Warehouse struck twice more while crews fought the fire; Sumy terminal hit and three lorries damaged; a Kyiv region sorting centre destroyed |
| 27 Aug | Zaporizhstal steelworks | Five ballistic missiles | Zaporizhzhia | Blast furnace shop, power and transport infrastructure hit; plant already halted since the 11 August strike that killed eight |
| 27 Aug | Cargo ship Progress IV, out of Reni with sugar and peas | Reported drone strike, unattributed | Black Sea, Romania's economic zone | Caught fire and sank; all 12 crew rescued; Romania has opened a criminal investigation and named nobody |
| 28 Aug | Fozzy hypermarket and production facilities, Vyshneve | Drones | Kyiv region | Operations halted, scale of damage being assessed; no casualties |
| 28 Aug | Epicentr hypermarket, Zaporizhzhia | Drone | Zaporizhzhia | Fire over about 2,000 sq m; four injured; the chain's last operating store in the city |
| 28 Aug | Hypermarket, Pavlohrad | Not stated | Dnipropetrovsk | Store burned; a 17-year-old killed and seven injured; the chain was not named by officials |
| 28 Aug | Petrol station, Kharkiv | Geran-4 drone | Kharkiv | Fuel dispensers and operator's building burned; one woman killed and four men injured |
| 28 Aug | 14 warehouse premises across five districts, including a book warehouse at Sviatopetrivske | Shahed-type drones | Kyiv region | Publishing stock destroyed; Readeat suspended shipments |
| 28 Aug | Warehouses of a private company, Myla | Drones | Kyiv region | Prolonged detonations; M-06 highway closed over 17 km; more than 200 evacuated; prosecutors opened an inquiry into the storage of explosive materials |
| 28 Aug | Cargo lorries | Drones | Zhytomyr | Four lorries and three semi-trailers burned |
| 28 Aug | Power facilities in four regions | Not stated | Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Kyiv | Consumers cut off; Ukrenergo published no numbers |
| 29 Aug | Lorries carrying grain, Safianivka | Shahed drones | Odesa, Izmail district | Five lorries destroyed and three damaged; about 125 tonnes of grain damaged; one killed and three injured |
| 29 Aug | Energy infrastructure, Mykolaiv city and two districts | Shahed-136 drones, Banderol cruise missiles, one Iskander-M | Mykolaiv | More than 300,000 consumers cut off; trams and trolleybuses suspended |
| 29 Aug | Supermarket and a warehouse, Mykolaiv | Drones | Mykolaiv | Both caught fire; no casualties reported |
| 29 Aug | Warehouse at Zolochiv, enterprises at Chuhuiv and Liubotyn, power lines at Chervona Poliana and Cherkaska Lozova, a shopping centre and two petrol stations | Four missiles, guided bombs, 11 Molniya drones, one FPV and 83 unidentified drones | Kharkiv | Cherkaska Lozova cut off; two killed and 11 injured across the region |
| 29 Aug | A shop, a gas pipeline and a mobile phone tower | Not stated | Kherson | 34 settlements struck; one killed and 26 wounded |
| 29 Aug | Logistics company building, Pavlohrad | Not stated | Dnipropetrovsk | Building destroyed; two wounded |
| 28-29 Aug | Ukrposhta delivery lorry, near Kramatorsk | Drone | Donetsk oblast | Vehicle destroyed with about 500 parcels aboard; date placed by ISW and not independently confirmed |
| 29-30 Aug | Black Sea port infrastructure | Banderol S8000 jet loitering munitions | Odesa | Cargo operations prevented; vessel calls down from seven or eight ships a day to one, per the Ukrainian Ports Association |
| 30 Aug | Food storage warehouses, operator not named | Not stated | Odesa | Damaged; fire covering roughly 3,000 sq m |
| 30 Aug | Food-processing facility, a warehouse, port infrastructure and energy sites, operators not named | Not stated | Mykolaiv | Struck; single-sourced and no damage detail given |
| 30-31 Aug | Nova Poshta terminal | One Kh-59 and 121 Shahed-type drones across the attack | Odesa | Terminal building partially destroyed; fire later extinguished; no casualties |
| 31 Aug | Warehouse holding goods of the Varus supermarket chain, Boryspil | Not stated | Kyiv region | A large amount of goods damaged and destroyed, per the company; all 119 stores stayed open; deliveries may be delayed and some items temporarily unavailable |
| 31 Aug | Distribution centre of the Avrora chain | Not stated | Kyiv region | Completely destroyed, per the co-owner; no employees injured; second Avrora centre lost in five days |
| 31 Aug | Unspecified infrastructure, Odesa city | Shahed and Banderol drones and guided aerial bombs | Odesa | Infrastructure damaged, details being clarified by the regional administration; electricity supply disrupted across the city |
| 1 Sep | Port export infrastructure at Odesa and Chornomorsk, the Orlivka ferry crossing on the Romanian border, energy infrastructure and a sewing workshop | At least ten Banderol S8000, plus Shahed drones and guided aerial bombs | Odesa | Orlivka took direct hits and operations are fully suspended; it handles up to 1,200 vehicles a day. Temporary blackouts in some areas; major fire at the workshop; two residential buildings damaged and one injured |
Strikes on economic infrastructure in Ukraine since 1 June 2026. Compiled from publicly available sources, including our own reporting and the Centre for Eastern Studies' war reports. Dates are of the strike where known and of first report otherwise; the list is of significant strikes on economic targets and is not exhaustive.
The pattern
Read the two tables side by side and the exchange has a shape. Russia is working on the parts of Ukraine's economy that touch the outside world: the berths at Odesa and Chornomorsk, the grain elevators, the Danube lorry parks, and now a ferry crossing into Romania. Ukraine is working on the parts of Russia's economy that touch its own consumers: refineries, fuel supply, e-commerce warehouses and, in Rostov, the ports that serve them.
Neither is a military campaign in the conventional sense, and neither side is pretending otherwise. Russia's defence ministry described its September 1 targets as substations supplying port infrastructure. Ukraine's General Staff names refineries. Both are attacks on the other's ability to earn and to distribute, and both have now reached a scale where the effects appear in national statistics rather than in incident reports: 3.8mn barrels a day of Russian refining against a 5.3mn requirement; Ukrainian grain exports at about a third of the July rate.
The escalation is also becoming geographically indiscriminate in a way it was not in June. A Ukrainian drone over Yekaterinburg at 1,600 km and a Russian strike on a crossing point into an EU member state are both moves that put third parties in the way, and both happened in the same 48 hours. Russia's plan to freeze Ukraine into submission over the coming winter has not gone away either; its defence ministry said on August 30 that it was preparing massive strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure, and the heating season starts in about six weeks.
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